My blogs have become a little bit infrequent lately. For the moment, let me just blame the fact that European cultures are what I am used to and I find it hard to find anything interesting enough to write about. That said, by now, most of you probably already know that I have moved again and I am currently living in Spain, or rather, the Basque Country, in the beautiful town of San Sebastián (Donostia in Euskara). I am again staying with a family looking after their little girl, the main reason for this being that in this type of (volunteer) work people usually want you to stay for several months and since I need to stay in the same place for several months in order to play in a football team our interests match.

I must say, arriving here was an adventure of its own, as I took the ferry from Genova to Barcelona, a ferry that after Barcelona continues to Morocco. And I came to the conclusion that refusing to fly within the continent makes life just so much more interesting. Upon boarding the ferry I felt like I was in Morocco already, everything was in Arabic, there was a mosque on board and sooo many muslim families. And that was only good because it was the day before Christmas and I still remember vividly the horrible Christmas decorations on board of the ferry that took me from Greece to Italy almost exactly one year earlier. There was no Christmas decoration on this ferry. People were amazingly nice and trusting (as is common on the southern ferries, I find, but probably even more so here because they come from a different culture). During the day the ship was buzzing with different languages, mainly Italian and Arabic but also Spanish, English, and the ever-present Dutch and German (not talking about myself here). But at night it was quiet enough to get some sleep at least, which seemed also very important, seeing that the people who continued to Morroco had to spend another two nights on the ferry.

In Barcelona I was lucky enough to meet and stay with a friend, who also happens to be muslim, which I wouldn't care about on any other day of the year but on the 24th of December I found this to be very convenient. No family duties for him. He spent the whole day showing me around his home town, which, clearly is a beautiful city and all but in the end it's just building after building and once again I came to the conclusion that I am not into that kind of travelling. It was good to be there when discussing the issues but what stayed with me after leaving was not the images that are now saved on my computer but the conversations we had about Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and the problems there are in and between all of them. And there sure are a lot, and they are not limited to the ones that the rest of Europe suddenly heard about when the protests started. When you follow the news outside the country you could think the protests came out of nowhere but they did not. Also, when you are not in the middle of the fight, you might think that answering the question 'should Catalonia become independent from Spain?' should not be so hard, depending on you political views, but it is, even if you have your political views very clear. Which was probably the biggest lesson I learned from visiting the city that I have been told so many times I really had to go and visit.

The next day I took the train to San Sebastián. The train left early in the morning and it was a fast train, so the ride took only just over five hours and we almost arrived in the Basque Country before the fog thinned enough for me to be able to see anything of the country the train passed through. So, in the end, I basically went from the Mediterranean coast of Spain to the Atlantic coast, somehow without ever really being in Spain. As in, in a place where people proudly call themselves Spanish. Just like in Barcelona everybody here understands Spanish but when you walk around you hear people frequently talking Euskara and everything that is written anywhere, from advertisments to bus time tables, is written in Euskara first and often (but not always) followed by the Spanish translation. It took me about two days to find out the more inconvenient truth about the history of Euskara language and since that moment I feel a bit ashamed for not being able to speak or even understand it. Speaking Euskara was prohibited during the Franco times, so people could only secretly speak it at home. The people who went to school during those times did not learn Euskara in school so some of them don't know it well, or at all, and I have been told that because of it being illegal to speak it outside the house very distinct local dialects developed that sometimes make it hard even for Euskara speakes to understand each other. Nowadays Euskara is the language which is taught in schools and even at university and Spanish for them is a foreign language just like English (only movies don't get dubbed into Euskara, so if they watch TV their Spanish will still be better than their English, much like English is for most people in Northern European countries). At football trainings I always have people happily translating everything that is important into Spanish, or sometimes the coaches themselves speak Spanish, knowing that everybody else will also understand that. It all works perfectly and seems to be no problem whatsoever. Like they are used to doing it. I also noticed, when they speak in Euskara among themselves they would use Spanish words or even whole or half Spanish sentences in between so I could even gather some of what they are saying.

So, besides the language, the politics in the Basque Country are a bit easier, because they province already has a higher degree of independence compared to Catalonia. On the other hand, it becomes even clearer that their feelings towards Spain (usually expressed as feelings towards Madrid, as in, the government) are mostly negative. And I believe that this is true for supporters of all political views. Interestingly, this seems to not affect their love for football clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona, which are the two most liked clubs even here. This is despite the fact that they have two local clubs in the Spanish first league (one from San Sebastián, one from Bilbao) and the fact that I had thought that football is really important for them. I must say, from what I observed so far, it seems much less important than in Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, and even Germany. But maybe I will change my mind when I stay here a bit longer. Either way, the local team wears the Basque flag in the neck of their shirts, as do many other sports teams around here. When you walk around town you see more Catalan flags than Spanish ones, Spanish flags are almost only found on official government buildings, everywhere else it is only Basque flags. I even learned that the Basque country has their own bird ringing centre, which, in my opinion, shows just how far behind we humans are compared to all other creatures on this wonderful planet. But so be it.

The best thing about San Sebastián is clearly that fact that it is by the sea. I can see the sea from the window in our kitchen and it is about five minutes walking to the beach. And I must say, I love the Atlantic, it is a really nice sea with all its waves and a certain unpredictablity. I have been here for less than a month and there were already at least five days, probably more, where certain roads and walking and cycling paths had to be shut down because the waves kept crashing on there and it is just too dangerous to let anybody go there. I have already decided that probably making sure that nobody enters a closed road is one of the main duties of the local police. I have never seen them doing anything else. Due to the waves, San Sebastián is also known as a surfers' paradise, and due to its beauty it is a famous tourist destination even for non-surfers, many from Spain but also from the rest of Europe and of the world. So its centre and the trails along the beach are always full of tourists, but that is not such a big problem because apart from the beach the nicer parts of the town are the surrounding hills and tourists clearly don't go there.

As for the weather, people here think it is cold, they call it winter and they all get sick, blaming it on the cold weather. For me it seems perfectly nice, there were only two or three days where the temperature got close to zero, with the rain that was cold even for my terms but for the rest the temperature is quite steady between 5 and 15 degrees, as is the rain which is most of the time not heavy and not falling for more than an hour or two at a time but usually several times per day. People here do complain about the rain when they have nothing better to talk about but it doesn't stop them from going outside or even taking the bike. Talking about bikes, there is a surprisingly large network of bicycle trails in the city and I am in the lucky situation that one of the trails that leaves the city passes directly by the football fields where I train. Because otherwise I have literally no idea how I would get there other than by bus (which is possible but the bus has a habit of going when it feels like rather than when the schedule says so it tends to be a bit annoying, and it takes about as long as the bike so…). The bike trails in the city are amazingly inconvenient, full of stops, crossing the road seemingly every 200 metres, pedastrians walk on there because often they are not well marked, in summary, just terrible. Despite that, I have never seen any cyclist go on the road instead of using the cycling paths. Mind you, there are not a lot of cyclists, I see maybe like five or so, per hour even when walking on the main cycle routes. Drivers drive very carefully with pedastrians, stop even for pedastrians crossing at red, so I can only assume that you could also cycle on the road without too much danger, I just never saw it happen. I guess it won't be long before I will want to go and discover the surrounding villages (also the ones where none of the two cycle routes go) and will find out.

Last thing for today, so far I happen to have spent the most important holidays in this city: New Year's, Three Kings and the day of San Sebastian. New Year's was perfectly boring, as in Spain it is mostly celebrated at home with the family. On the Dia de los Reyes there was a big parade with what then felt like half of the inhabitants of San Sebastián dressed up in music companies that moved through the city centre, throwing candys in the crowd. I had thought that that was a big parade, anyway, until the Day of San Sebastián came. Because then the city showed me, what a big parade really is: 5000 children were parading through the centre, dressed uo playing drums. I know that that day is extremely important for the locals but to an outsider, this is really all there is to it. Well, so those 5000 were the school children (and young adults). Adults were walking around the rest of the city in their own bands playing drums. Basically the day is just that: 24 hours of playing drums. If there is any point to it, then I have missed it, but this is how the people of San Sebastián celebrate their big day. Oh well, of course, getting drunk is also a big part of it, but I don't think that's in the official statutes. That's it. Well, gotta have seen it once, I guess.

Okay, I will leave it here for now, I will think of more to write later for sure, but that's only good because that way you won't have to wait for another five months before I write again. Saludos!